North Shore Digest

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News & Information

North Shore Digest airs from 5-6 p.m. weekdays and is the place to get caught up with what’s happening in your backyard and beyond, with international and national news from the Associated Press and local news from WTIP's News Department. The program always incorporates local announcements and events, significant interviews with local people and newsmakers, a mix of music, and features like National Native News, School News, and the Minnesota News Connection.

Just as summer inevitably turns to fall, everything in life comes to its natural conclusion. Earlier this year, Cindy and I sold Sawbill Canoe Outfitters to Clare and Dan Shirley, our daughter and son-in-law. This week, we packed up our home at Sawbill, the accumulation of 27 years of a happy and busy residence, and moved to our new homestead in Grand Marais.

It is, of course, bittersweet to leave the home containing so many good memories, but also wrenching to leave the West End to become Townies. Although we now officially live in Grand Marais, we plan to work at Sawbill for a long time, keeping a strong connection with the West End that we love.

The process of actually moving, filling the boxes, dismantling the beds, renting the U-haul and the hard work of lugging each thing from one place to another, is one of the most universal of human experiences. Family and friends are called on to help, usually with the memory of helping them at an earlier time, and the big job finally gets done.

As with all big transitions, there is a touch of sadness and a portion of joy. Clothing that hasn’t been worn for ten years is culled from the closet and donated. That weird knick-knack, received as a gift from a long dead great aunt, can be thrown away guilt-free. I found a pocketknife that I lost in the late ‘90s and a couple of nice shirts that I didn’t even know that I owned. As the family photos and mementos get picked up for packing a memory is triggered and laughter ensues.

In the beginning, each item is carefully fitted into the truck, like a real life Tetris game, strategizing to conserve space and minimize damage. By the end, things are being tossed in willy-nilly, as the forgotten closet shelf or the lingering lamp finally gets stowed and the urgency for completion sets in.

On the other end, the elaborate plan for unpacking quickly devolves into, “let’s just get everything inside and sort it out later.” Still, the excitement and possibilities of a new home, new memories and the fast-paced urban life of Grand Marais have us smiling and hopeful.

After a long day of moving and a few hours of playing music with my good West End friends, Eric Frost and Jim Elverhoy, at Bluefin Grille, I headed for a late night drive up the Sawbill Trail, anticipating an early shift the next morning. Halfway there I noticed two pairs of glowing eyes ahead. As I approached the eyes, they resolved into a small bear and a fox. The bear was chasing the fox in and out of the ditches and across the road. When I got near enough, they both stopped and looked at me.

My first thought was that the bear was trying to catch the fox and eat it. I didn’t even reach for my camera, because I assumed both animals would run off into the woods. Instead, they resumed their chase, which gradually brought them closer and closer to the car. After watching them for a while, it dawned on me that they were playing with each other. At least, that’s how it looked to me. Both were a little smaller than normal adults of their species and they had the playfulness of large puppies. That’s when I grabbed the iPhone, fumbling to get the video camera rolling, but also not wanting to miss a second of a remarkable wildlife moment. Predictably, as soon as the video started rolling, they took their game into the woods and out of sight. I continued my journey up the trail and saw another, identical bear about a quarter of a mile further on.

This odd little experience reminds me that the West End is a rich web of complex life, churning along, day and night, through the ages and mostly out of our perception. It’s all part of what makes it great to work – and be a former resident – of the wonderful West End.

Traditionally fall is when we’re most apt to see ruffed grouse, especially if we’re hunters. But grouse sign is visible all year. WTIP’s Jay Andersen talks with naturalist Chel Anderson about these birds well adapted to our northern environment.

Deane Morrison is a science writer at the University of Minnesota, where she authors the Minnesota Starwatch column.

There's a lot to see just after sunset early in the month of October; as the moon marches eastward it travels above Saturn and Mars. Jupiter and Mercury are close together just before sunrise on October 11. The Fall constellations are appearing with Capricornus, the sea goat, seen faintly to the east.

Welcome back to Magnetic North. Today I want to address the subject of staying put for the winter. Staying home instead of sprouting snowbird wings and flapping away at the first sign of frost. Fact is, most of us retired sorts could go somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. But we don’t. Too much money we say. Too much hassle we protest. And so we stay. Stoically, but seldom silently, enduring all that Mother Nature chucks at us for the next six months. We are indeed, the stuff of epic drama. And drama, my friends, is exactly what it is and why it is we stay.

Because the truth of the thing, the real reason why so many of us stay here all winter is this: This is where the good stuff is and we don’t want to miss any of it. Even for a month or two. Or, in my case, even for a week or two.

For instance, have you noticed that the pine and balsam and spruce are now taking center stage? Leaves are leaving deciduous trees naked and slightly embarrassed. To their rescue and our craving for color come the evergreens. The sight of these giants standing tall throughout a January blizzard warms me as no Florida sun could ever do.

The apple tree in the yard is bare now, too; but one bushel of its fruit is already transformed into silky, tangy sweet apple butter. Twelve pints this year. I got the recipe from a book my husband, Paul, got me at a long gone bookshop in town, the Book Station. There, proprietors Ray and Virginia Quick, also sold angora mittens made by a local woman who spun her yarn right off her bunnies and dyed the wool with Kool-Aid! Virginia was a fount of grandmotherly advice for a newcomer like me. And Ray was a daily vision, breezing through town on his way to the little shop on his ten-speed bike. They, like their shop, are gone now, but with each new batch of apple butter, I remember them fondly. Remembering blooms in winter.

So do spectacular sunsets and sunrises. The former casting a rosy glow over the world - Sigurd Olson called it “Ros Light.” And the latter coming so late in the morning that even a slug-a-bed like me can catch it most days. And between sundown and sunup there is a delicious 14 hours in which to star-gaze, build fires in the hearth, read, write, imagine, and, most glorious of all, give in to the siren call of comfort food.

Ahh, comfort food. We must have it so we can bulk up in the event we end up in a ditch and are not found for days, don’t you know. At least that’s my excuse. On the first visit to our clinic after moving here, I found no comfort at all when I stepped on the scale in late January. Before I could protest the inaccuracy of the equipment, the nurse patted my hand and said, somewhat cruelly I thought, “Welcome to Cook County.” We transplants hear this phrase often in our first years, usually after a mind-boggling event of some kind renders us speechless.

Speech in winter tends to be as brisk as the air. Small talk is for summer. Pumping gas in a gale wind in subzero temperatures one tends to keep one’s mouth shut, conserving what little warm air there is inside. At the most, an exchange out of doors at the market might be along these lines.

“Had 21 below at my place to his morning.” To which a reply might be, “Anything freeze up on you?” The concern being, not fingers or toes but plumbing. Winter is our shared enemy and we are comrades bonded together in the fight to endure, if not to conquer it. We strategize hourly about how to get to work, then home, then to this or that meeting. We are ready for anything. And we are invariably snookered.

The power goes off. The private plowers all break down on the same day. The early winter rain turns to snow at midnight and garage doors freeze shut.

No day is ever like one in living memory, according to the weather mavens at the Blue Water Cafe. It may be better. Or worse. But it is never, ever, the same.

And yet, in the midst all of this uncertainly we have community and the ever-present sweetness of wood smoke in the air. Add to these, the incessant meetings of committees and boards and hobby groups, like the knitters at Java Moose coffee shop or the cribbage crowd at the Senior Center. Community. It’s here to take or to leave. But it is here for us, solid and snug and comforting,

This place, this stretch of woods and shore in winter is truly a world apart. There is a saying here that many come to our woods and shore to find themselves and when winter comes, often don’t care much for what they have found. I get that. The unbroken whiteness. The monochromatic palette and daily bouts with nature is not for everyone. But I just happen to be wired to love that kind of world and for that I am so very, very grateful.

In the summer months, tourists often ask us, “what do you do up here in the winter?” Sometimes I say no one actually lives here in winter, that we all leave and the highway is closed at the county line. Or some such smarty pants answer. But I never tell them the truth. Because to yammer on about Northern Lights and apple butter, much less the thrill of bag day at the recycling shop on Fridays, would be exposing some of my favorite things to ridicule. And so usually, when asked that question, I just channel Jack Nicholson in the Shining and smile and say, “well now, that’s a secret.”